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A Few Words From Pastor Bryan
Our New Holy Week Sacred Day...
"Alabaster Wednesday"
It's hard to believe that Lent is just about over and that we are about to enter into Holy Week--the last week of Jesus's human life. I know that not too many of us will have the time or inclination in our busy lives to attend all of our midweek services, but if you do, I think you will be moved by the flow and depth of the week's events.
The mid-week services begin with "Alabaster Wednesday." If this holiday is unfamiliar to you, that is because we pretty much created it, and we came up with that name for it last year.
So What is Alabaster Wednesday?
I have been deeply touched by the writing of Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault, and by her work regarding Mary Magdalene in particular. No one has brought the relationship between Mary and Jesus more alive for me than Dr. Bourgeault (with the possible exception of the musical, "Jesus Christ Superstar.")
The following is an excerpt from the liturgy we will share together next Wednesday.
Dr. Bourgeault has done extensive work on the life and witness of Mary Magdalene, and has been instrumental in reclaiming the crucial role Mary played in Jesus’s life and ministry. She and countless others believe it is time for the Church to reframe how we understand the events of Holy Week and the meaning of the crucifixion in particular. Rather than seeing the cross as a symbol of the price that had to be paid in order for God to forgive the debt of human sin, Cynthia Bourgeault contends that Jesus’s death was an expression of extravagant and costly love, called forth by extravagant and unlimited love. Its purpose was to reveal the intimate depths of God’s love for us—to demonstrate that God would do anything for us in order to show us how beloved and cherished we are.
In addition to Mary using spikenard from an alabaster jar to anoint Jesus during the final week of his life, the only other time this fragrant spice is mentioned in Scripture is in the Song of Solomon, or what is often called the “Song of Songs” in the Hebrew Scriptures. This book is primarily a conversation between two lovers, and people have often not known quite what to with the fact that it gets downright erotic at times. Usually it is suggested that the intimate language is a metaphor for the love between God and humankind. Dr. Bourgeault and others suggest that the heart of Holy Week is an outpouring of love between two people who would do anything for each other, and who, when it comes time to have to say good-bye, do so with deep anguish and unspeakable tenderness and devotion. There is nothing essentially heteronormative about any of this. It’s about the beauty of passionately dedicated love or what is sometimes referred to as the “mystical marriage.”
In addition to the love between Mary and Jesus, Alabaster Wednesday is also an attempt to bring the role of Mary and the Divine Feminine into center stage in the drama of Holy Week. When Jesus was anointed before his death in the Gospel of John, the male disciples complain that it was a waste of this expense ointment. They suggest it would have been better to have sold the ointment and given the money to the poor. Jesus strongly rebukes them, affirms the gift of her deep love, says she alone has understood what he is facing, and then proclaims that "wherever the Gospel is proclaimed, she will be remembered."
Unfortunately, the Church throughout history has not been able or willing to fully "remember" and honor Mary or women, or the Divine Feminine. Thankfully this is beginning to change. Toward the end of his new book, Rethinking Life, author and activist Shane Claiborne shares a "letter to the Church" written by his friend Carols Rodrigues. The letter simply says,
Dear Church,
Jesus believed women.
Protected women.
Empowered women.
Honored women publicly.
Released the voice of women.
Confided in women.
Was funded by women.
Celebrated women by name.
Learned from women.
Respected women.
And spoke of women as examples to follow.
Your turn.
Well I hope and pray some of you will join us next Wednesday either in person or by zoom. But beyond that, I'm so grateful to be pastor of a church in which we can bring things like this into being, and for all the ways we welcome, honor, and cherish not only women, but the feminine energy and Divine Feminine in us all and for us all.
Hope to see you Sunday, and a bunch of times next week!
Pastor Bryan
NOTE: We will use a bit of spikenard in the service on Wednesday. Just a warning to any of you who might have extreme sensitivity to fragrances.
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